


The Life and Times of Lois Runce: Age 6 to 18

by ladygray99



Category: Lone Gunmen
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-04 13:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygray99/pseuds/ladygray99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even international women of mystery have to start somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Life and Times of Lois Runce: Age 6 to 18

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yvi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yvi/gifts).



> I hope this is what was wanted. Thank you riverotter1951 for the beta.

Lois Runce had been six. Her mother helped her pull on the small pink slippers then twist her already long hair around and around until it sat neatly at the back of her head. It was her birthday and her father had promised.

She had run down stairs, her new slippers sliding along the marble floors and into the ballroom. Her father was waiting with a man dressed in black pajamas.

"Lois, this is Mr. Wu. He has things to teach you that I want you to learn."

Lois had smiled. Her mother told her she should always smile at new people. Mr. Wu did not smile. Mr. Wu hurt her while her father watched. Mr. Wu taught her how to hurt other people.

That was the first time her father disappointed her.

~

When Lois was eight a new gardener was hired. He was named Matt. He was lazy and spent a lot of time sitting in the gardener's shed reading magazines. Lois liked him though.

When her father's friends came over the rule was she had to stay in her room. She seldom did. Instead she would climb out her window and hide in the greenhouse or the gardener's shed. Matt let her read his magazines. They had stories about UFOs and Mexican monsters that ate goats.

One day the head gardener found her with Matt. She was sent back to her room but she shoved one of Matt's magazines under her jumper. Matt was gone the next day. Lois read the magazine slowly. She read a story about how the Americans had killed their own president and blamed it on another man. Her finger had traced the name, Lee Harvey Oswald.

~

When Lois Runce was ten years old her mother died driving home from her favorite dress shop.

Lois' father came home from business for the funeral then went back to business.

Lois wandered around the house, then the gardens then, out to the servants' quarters. The house keeper's boy, Johnny, who was twelve, asked her if she wanted to see something cool.

He had a computer he had built himself from bits and pieces. He showed Lois the game he was playing. To play it he had to take the phone and put it onto a thing that squeaked, hissed and beeped. When he let Lois take a turn he told her she had to pick a name that wasn't hers. Lois Runce with one finger carefully typed Y-V-E-S.

~

When Lois Runce was twelve she was sent away to school. The house keeper who had always been kind to her gave her a little pink diary with a lock.

Lois sat on her bed her first night away from home and in a careful hand wrote the words 'This is the Diary of Lois Runts'. She stared at the words for a long time before crossing them out. On the line below she wrote 'These are the Adventures of Yves Adele Harlow'.

~

When Yves was fourteen her father commanded her home for the holidays. He was throwing a grand affair for his clients and as lady of the house she was to be a proper hostess for him.

She put on one of her mother's dresses which already fit. She twisted her hair to the top of her head and put on makeup the way one of the fourth form girls had showed her. She slipped her feet into a pair of her mother's heeled shoes. They were too large so she shoved stockings into the toes and carefully made her way to the front door where she was to stand beside her father and bow politely to the men who came in.

She smiled at them. Her mother told her she should always smile at new people. They smiled back.

After that she milled around smiling at people asking them if they had everything they wanted. When she thought she was going to cry from the shoes she escaped to the library and took them off.

One of her father's clients found her there. He told her there was something he wanted.

Yves moved the way Mr. Wu had shown her.

She thought her father would be proud of her. When he slapped her Yves told herself that would be the last time she would let her father disappoint her.

~

When Yves was sixteen her father told her that she would be coming on a business trip with him, to learn the family trade.

Yves pretended to be impressed by the guns and bombs and made herself not flinch when the buyers patted her cheeks or other bits of her.

She made herself listen. She made herself learn. She made herself stroke her father's ego.

Month after month in sweltering jungles, frozen wastelands, and burning deserts her father did business. Then one buyer asked how much extra for Yves. Her father had laughed and the man had laughed and Yves had laughed but that night Yves saw her father looking at her. Some time after midnight Yves ran.

Johnny, the housekeeper's son, met her at Heathrow with the contents of her mother's jewelry box and a new passport that made her two years older and gave her the name Yves Adele Harlow.

Johnny told her to keep in touch. He was putting together a crew. He had plans for better things.

~

When Yves was eighteen her father shot at her.

With Johnny's help she had snuck back into the house where she grew up. Her plan was to acquire a copy of her father's records and sell them to MI-6 or perhaps the CIA. The money from hocking her mother's jewelry was long gone so it was a matter of who would pay the most.

Yves had her ear pressed to the safe while Johnny kept watch. After the first two numbers Yves knew the third. It was her mother's birthday. The tumblers fell into place just as her father's office door swung open.

He stood there and blinked once before pulling a gun from under his suit jacket. He fired at her first. Yves told herself it was because she was near the safe and he didn't recognize her under the black clothes and mask.

He missed. The bullet ricocheted off the safe. Johnny cried out and hit the floor. Yves ran towards her father and past him, through the house, out the servants' entrance, through the garden and into the woods. All the time her father was on her tail shooting at her.

Yves pulled off her mask when she got to the woods. She leapt across the stream she had once caught frogs in and past the old oak she used to climb and had broken her arm falling out of. She ran long past the time her father stopped chasing. She ran until her lungs refused to take air. She ran until her legs betrayed her and collapsed.

Yves panted for air trying to ignore the icy bullets of rain and told herself that was as close as she would ever get to her father again.


End file.
